Given that they seem to have trouble keeping up with Mozilla's release schedule (they're currently shipping 45.2.0), the new changes in Firefox, and the fact that it could be a useful platform to get Goanna a bit wider distribution - would it make sense to approach them with the idea of switching from Gecko to Goanna? Or even Webkit to Goanna? (I don't think Apple is still updating standalone Webkit any more)

They use XULRunner and last I checked they haven't updated their xulrunner in quite some time and now simply can't because there isn't a standalone stub anymore. This product is largely proprietary.. and for that matter I am not sure they are keeping their bundled chrome up to date either.

It is basically a UI and a Shell for other engines and a not very impressive one either. Think Neoplanet just with switching between all three embedded engines.

Well you surely know more of the technical details, I just figured it couldn't hurt to have a platform that claims 20 million downloads as a distribution point for Goanna.

Unless Moonchild thinks it's so shoddy that he doesn't want to be associated with it.

Personally I keep it around on some of my Windows machines as mostly a curiosity to play with if I run into weird websites. (Along with things like Qupzilla - which is unfortunately now just another Blink-based thing, Opera 12.17, etc..)

Also, I can tell you.. I don't want to get within 10 feet of Lunascape if I don't have to. Also, like I said it is a proprietary UI/Shell with embedded rendering engines.. IE forms control for Trident, and XUL Runner for gecko and whatever Google Chrome's option is.. It is an interesting product.. IN THEORY.. but no.. Just no.

Also, you wouldn't be able to run extensions from any browser on it.. MAYBE ActiveX.. maybe.. Why would you even suggest this?

Matt A Tobin wrote:Also, I can tell you.. I don't want to get within 10 feet of Lunascape if I don't have to. Also, like I said it is a proprietary UI/Shell with embedded rendering engines.. IE forms control for Trident, and XUL Runner for gecko and whatever Google Chrome's option is.. It is an interesting product.. IN THEORY.. but no.. Just no.

Also, you wouldn't be able to run extensions from any browser on it.. MAYBE ActiveX.. maybe.. Why would you even suggest this?

I suggested it because I think PaleMoon/Goanna can use all the exposure it can get (even if it just means showing up in webserver logs, so webmasters are hopefully a tiny bit less likely to assume it doesn't exist/matter) in the new world where it has to stand on its own 2 feet and not just be (figuratively and technically) "a Firefox fork".

Even now we are needing the crutch of "Firefox user-agent compatibility mode" more often than not to keep websites from serving PM users lousy page content. It seems to me that that can only get worse over the next few years unless PM miraculously becomes almost as commonplace as FF is now.

Moonchild wrote:And what, pray tell, would Pale Moon gain from such a partnership by driving more users to another browser?...

I'm inclined to think PM would gain more than Lunascape would.

A change in one engine of the three they already include is not likely to make a huge difference in the appeal of what they're already offering (besides perhaps extended the projects lifespan a bit now that FF is increasingly not practicable for them to include), whereas from PM's perspective any of the traffic generated by usage of Goanna via those clients is nothing but positive from the standpoint of web usage stats.

All that said, if the project is no good and you simply don't want to be associated with it, that's another kettle of fish entirely.

Another idea as far as usage broadening - the original Opera management got a significant usage bump by doing deals with set-top box makers back in the day. (Tho I'm guessing in today's world that may entail running on eg an Android platform, and I realize PM Android is in limbo due to stretching of dev resources these days)

Let me state it another way: I think all it would do is improve Lunascape, and other than a different name, the users of Lunascape wouldn't care. I don't see how that benefits Pale Moon. It doesn't exactly look like a partnership to me unless Lunascape in turn would also provide a way for people to become Pale Moon users, which I don't think they do -- they just use the available engines to build their proprietary front-end on. It would be nice if more products use Goanna, but ultimately, Goanna isn't a commercial product so it doesn't bring anything in, isn't really marketable as a product, etc.

Improving Mozilla code: You know you're on the right track with code changes when you spend the majority of your time deleting code.

"If you want to build a better world for yourself, you have to be willing to build one for everybody." -- Coyote Osborne

Moonchild wrote:It would be nice if more products use Goanna, but ultimately, Goanna isn't a commercial product so it doesn't bring anything in, isn't really marketable as a product, etc.

Well regardless of whether it's a 'commercial product' that you hope to gain paying users for, my view is that probably the single biggest challenge for Goanna and PM from 2017 forward is growing the userbase enough to where it is not universally dismissed as irrelevant by those who design webpages and web content. Or else the kind of stuff happening with Netflix these days to discriminate against PM will sound mild in comparison down the road. I see the embedding of the rendering engine in other products as one way of addressing that.

In the past the closer characteristics to FF were a bit of a safety-net. But it appears that PM isn't going to have nearly as much of that going forward.

K.. Since you obviously don't understand what Lunascape is.. Let's say we partner with them.. Let's say they include a Goanna XUL Runner in place of old Gecko XUL Runner and even uses it by default.. How does that help anyone? All our extensions and themes won't work and sites are still gonna discriminate against the rendering engine and its feature set for that of whatever Google Chrome has. NOTHING HAS CHANGED in that aspect.

Let's say we throw away Pale Moon as it is and just focus on Goanna XUL Runner and lets assume they let us have the source code for their front end and we produce an identical variant merely called Pale Moon. All our extensions and themes won't work and sites are still gonna discriminate against the rendering engine and its feature set for that of whatever Google Chrome has. NOTHING HAS CHANGED in that aspect except that Pale Moon as it was is destroyed.

And you obviously don't get what I was trying to say, so... never mind. Let's just say I don't see a reason to consider partnering with a front-end provider when all they will do is consume our work. And I doubt, since the platforms are all open source, that they are going to pay for such use

Improving Mozilla code: You know you're on the right track with code changes when you spend the majority of your time deleting code.

"If you want to build a better world for yourself, you have to be willing to build one for everybody." -- Coyote Osborne

If tomorrow 10% of all hits in webserver logs around the world said either "Pale Moon" or "Goanna" in them, it would be a news item and people (web devs and content producers in particular) would have to start paying attention to PM. The press-releases from web/browser metrics companies that lots of tech sites faithfully reproduce once a month etc would now have a new player to think about and it would be much harder for companies like Netflix to ignore PM and pretend it doesn't exist.

It doesn't matter how or where those hits come from, whether it comes from happy loyal PM users, or from someone using a front-end that has Goanna embedded in it or some set-top box or "smart TV" or whatever and the users have no idea what engine is displaying their pages.

Once the traffic starts getting noticed, PM will start attracting interest because people are going to be paying attention to it.

What one does with the interest depends on the project's goals I guess. I don't know if that includes getting wealthy from it, gaining popularity/notoriety, attracting developers to write themes and extensions or contribute core code, or some combination or none of the above. But in the browser business IMHO if you can't reach some kind of minimal level of marketshare you become ghettoized and ignored and it goes downhill from there. Particularly if you're not using one of the "popular engines" to piggyback on.

Does anyone know of a standalone, non-Chromium/Gecko/MS/Webkit-based browser that actually has noticeable marketshare today? I can't think of one.

All that said, I don't necessarily think Lunascape is the great savior, it was just one project that looked possibly partnerable in that regard.

20 million downloads doesn't mean that there are anywhere near 20 million users or the software is any good. People download stuff all the time, decide if it's useful or not or even just if they like how it looks. If you're going to stare at the thing several hours a day...

It use to be a nice idea but it sounds like they are hitting dead ends now. Using an 8 year old metric to show how fast it is does nothing for it. Anybody who has read up some on browsers (not just looking at the fancy graphs) probably is gonna run the other way seeing that. Our browser was the fastest 8 years ago... well, that's nice if I need an 8 year old browser.